In
December 2016, this Court held a bench trial of Plaintiffs
Barbara St. Pierre’s and Lynn Guillotte’s
jury-waived claims of violations of the Massachusetts Wage
Act, the Massachusetts Minimum Wage Law, and Breach of
Contract. The Court now issues its findings of fact and
conclusions of law pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 52(a).

Findings
of Facts

Based
on trial testimony and admitted exhibits, I find as follows.
Barbara St. Pierre and Lynn Guillotte are former employees of
the CVS-branded store located at 197 Boston Turnpike,
Shrewsbury, Massachusetts (Store No. 8). St. Pierre was
employed at Store No. 8 from April 2011 – July 2015,
and Guillotte from July 2001 – March 2013. Both St.
Pierre and Guillotte were pharmacy technicians
(“PTs”) – hourly employees responsible for
production of prescriptions, entering prescriptions into the
system, and delivering customer service.

LEARNet
Training Requirements

CVS
Pharmacy requires all PTs, including St. Pierre and
Guillotte, to regularly complete mandatory training courses
through LEARNet, an online “learning management
system.” LEARNet administers training courses covering
a variety of topics from new computer systems to changes in
the law. LEARNet tracks the courses completed by each
employee, including the date and time at which training was
completed, and in some instances, the dates and times of
failed attempts to complete training. LEARNet neither records
the length of time taken to complete a training activity, nor
the incidence of training effort that did not result in an
attempt to complete a course. LEARNet is designed to allow
users to complete trainings from any location with internet
access. There is no dispute that training conducted on the
LEARNet system is compensable time as a matter of law.

CVS
Time and Compensation Policies

It is
CVS policy that, as hourly employees, all PTs must record and
report all time worked, and must review and sign their time
cards to verify that they have been paid for all hours
worked. It is also CVS policy that all PTs must be paid for
time spent on LEARNet, whether done at the store, or
remotely. It is a violation of CVS policy for PTs to work
“off-the-clock” (i.e., uncompensated), or for
anyone to instruct or encourage another employee to perform
uncompensated work. This policy is communicated to pharmacy
and store managers through a mandatory LEARNet training
module, however, there was no equivalent training module for
PTs regarding whether they were entitled to compensation for
time spent on LEARNet training outside of scheduled shifts,
or how to be paid for such training. Instead, the CVS
timekeeping and payroll policies are conveyed to PTs via the
employee handbook and the “policy portal.” The
version of the policy that the PT receives, “Policy on
Timekeeping and Payroll Practices,” which discusses
time and compensation policies for “work,” does
not expressly mention training time or LEARNet, does not
specify whether such time is compensable as
“work,” and does not indicate how an employee is
to receive compensation for time spent on training outside of
a scheduled shift at the store. The CVS handbook specifies
that an employee who is directed or encouraged to incorrectly
report their hours worked should report the incident to
[his/her] supervisor, Human Resource Business Partner,
or the CVS Ethics Hotline.

Store
Budget

Store
No. 8 was provided with a budget for the total number of
employee work hours for the month. To stay within its
assigned budget, the store had to limit the number of total
hours worked by PTs. Hours spent on LEARNet training were
included in the budgeted hours, whether done at or away from
the store. Store No. 8 consistently used all, or nearly all,
of its budgeted hours every week for scheduled shift work, so
that there were not sufficient hours available to schedule
off-shift training. Store No. 8 had a particularly busy
pharmacy, and PTs typically did not have time available to
work on LEARNet during their scheduled shifts.

Reporting
Time Spent on LEARNet

Pharmacy
technicians are required to log into a Point-of-Sale (POS)
system in the store at the beginning of their shift, and
logout at the end of a shift. If a PT does a LEARNet training
module during their shift, they are paid for that time
because they are already “on the clock.” While it
appears technologically plausible for CVS to electronically
track time spent in LEARNet and automatically enter that time
into the payroll system, the system was not set up to do
so.[1]

The
only way for a PT to be paid for hours spent on LEARNet
training outside of Store No. 8 was to report the time to
their Lead PT, have the Lead PT enter it into the schedule,
and ensure that the store manager or shift supervisor entered
those hours into the payroll system. Only store managers (and
not the pharmacy manager or Lead PT) can input the time into
the CVS payroll system. This was established through the
testimony of pharmacy manager Chris Moses and store manager
Terry Shea-Gehlert. Chris Moses testified that a PT must
report LEARNet time done outside of a scheduled shift to
their Lead PT, and that, as a pharmacy manager, he would not
be the person responsible for receiving that information from
PTs or ensuring that the time was compensated. If a PT were
to report the time to him, he would tell the Lead PT who
would then report it to the shift supervisor, because all
payroll was handled by the “front store” only.
Here “front store” means the CVS store within
which the Pharmacy operates. As pharmacy manager, he would
not check to make sure that the hours were ever recorded.
Moses acknowledged that he was in charge of making sure
mandatory training was completed, but claimed that it was the
store manager’s responsibility to make sure that the
hours were reported, recorded, and paid. Moses knew that St.
Pierre was completing LEARNet training at home, but never
verified that she was paid for that time. Moses stated that
this was the regular way pharmacy managers operated.

Store
manager Terry Shea-Gehlert testified that it was St.
Pierre’s responsibility to report mandatory LEARNet
time, and the Lead PT’s responsibility to add that time
to the schedule and send it to Shea-Gehlert. At that point,
Shea-Gehlert would enter the time into payroll. Shea-Gehlert
knew that St. Pierre did at least some LEARNet training at
home, but testified that it was not her responsibility to
follow up and make sure that St. Pierre was paid for the
time. The Court notes that there was a hierarchy of
supervisory and managerial employees variously responsible
for scheduling work (including training), ensuring that
training was completed, and managing payroll and payroll
budget. The most senior representative of CVS at Store No. 8,
the Store Manager, was both a) aware that at least one
employee performed training outside their regular shift, and
b) was directly responsible for compensation by entering time
into the payroll system.

CVS
knew PTs completed LEARNet training outside of scheduled
shifts

From a
corporate standpoint, CVS knew that PTs completed mandatory
trainings outside of their schedule shifts, from home or
another non-CVS location, and had designed the LEARNet system
with that purpose in mind. It was common enough that LEARNet
training was done outside of the store that CVS had a
mandatory training module for managers covering the topic to
ensure PTs were paid for that time.

At
Store No. 8, both store and pharmacy managers knew mandatory
trainings on LEARNet were done by employees outside of their
scheduled shifts, from home or another non-CVS location. Both
store and pharmacy managers instructed employees to complete
LEARNet training at home when there was insufficient time for
the employee to complete the training during his/her shift at
the store. On occasion, CVS required a course to be completed
before a PT could return to work for his/her next shift.

In
addition to managers, Lead PTs instructed PTs to complete
mandatory LEARNet training at home when there was not enough
time to complete training during their shift. Lead PTs served
as first line supervisors responsible for scheduling
PTs’ shifts, assigning PTs to particular stations or
tasks in the pharmacy, overseeing the work they did, ensuring
PTs completed mandatory trainings, and adding PTs hours,
including training hours worked off-shift, to the schedule so
they could be paid. Because CVS did not provide company email
addresses to PTs, Lead PTs also served as the primary point
of communication for the PTs. St. Pierre testified that she
was specifically told to ...

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